Death penalty on the decline?

Several southern states with histories of high use of the death penalty had no new death sentences or no executions in 2012, according to a new study released on Tuesday.

North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia had no death sentences and no executions this year, the Death Penalty Information Center found, and no executions were carried out in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana or Missouri. And in Texas, for the eighth consecutive year, the state executed more inmates — 15 — than it sentenced to death, “foreshadowing a decline in executions in the future,” the year-end report noted.

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In total, 43 people were executed in 2012, matching 2011’s total. Last year, however, 13 states carried out executions compared to just nine this year.

“More than half the states (29) in the country either do not have the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in five years, and almost half (23) have been without executions in ten years,” according to the report. “All executions in 2012 were by lethal injection, and all used a relatively new drug, pentobarbital, either alone or in combination with other drugs. Only 16 percent of the executions this year stemmed from the murder of a black victim, even though blacks are the victims in about 50 percent of murders.”

Meanwhile, 80 people were sentenced to death in 2012, with more than half of the new sentences in the south, the study stated. That’s a slight uptick from 2011’s total of 76 inmates sentenced, which was the lowest since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

And the report noted that this April, Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish the death penalty. The death penalty was replaced with life in prison without parole, but the ban doesn’t apply to the 11 inmates currently on death row in the state. Connecticut joined 16 other states in repealing the death penalty. A California referendum sought to abolish capital punishment, but the measure failed.

For 2013, the report points to states such as Maryland, Colorado and New Hampshire that “appear to be moving closer to legislative votes like Connecticut’s.”

“Capital punishment is becoming marginalized and meaningless in most of the country,” Richard Dieter, DPIC’s executive director and the report’s author said in a statement. “In 2012, fewer states have the death penalty, fewer carried out executions, and death sentences and executions were clustered in a small number of states. It is very likely that more states will take up the question of death penalty repeal in the years ahead.”